Re: New trial users - watch out for Pando Media Booster

Merged the dupe threads regarding this.

There is information regarding Pando's use here, the knowledge base link here (note the screenshot under "Step 3") and details and information regarding Pando's use, functions and configuration are listed here.

In response to some of the concerns that have been brought up in this thread:

Use of Pando Media Booster is indicated in the very first screen that comes up when you attempt to download the game (ie. downloading and then running "lotrohigh.exe" or "lotrostandard.exe")

Pando only continues seeding (ie sharing) the files for a limited period (72 hours currently) once the download has completed to offer everyone who is performing the download concurrently good overall connection coverage.

It is not malware itself, does not download malware, nor does it allow malware to be loaded into its "seed" connections, also it does not allow any other files to be downloaded/uploaded onto or from your system. I strongly recommend everyone read the Pando FAQ both the mini on the forums linked above and the Pando Networks site linked in that thread.

Re: New trial users - watch out for Pando Media Booster

even after the 72 hours though, the thing stays in your startup and eats memory and resources.

once done, its really easy 2 step process takes 10 seconds:
1) open task manager, kill pmb.exe
2) open ccleaner (dont have it? get it!) and remove it from your startup. If you are new to this, use ccleaner to stop other junkware as well, such as quicktime, adobe flash updater helper, and the like. The only things that really need to start at system boot are your virus scanner, your firewall, and ... thats it actually.

I would not bother to uninstall it as I suspect it will be needed for future updates to the game.

Draegon:
"stack all the morale you want but dont come on here wonderin why you aint hittin hard! :D"

Re: New trial users - watch out for Pando Media Booster

This is horrible!

I have a slow enough internet speed as it is and after installing LOTRO the speed became unbearable to the point that I had to pay for a cable man to come and check everything out.

The cable man suspected that my router was going bad so I decided to pay for a replacement which thankfully didn't cost much. That didn't really help so I decided to look for help online, now I found out the problem was the Pando Media Booster draining my bandwidth and turning my computer into a P2P slave. I wouldn't be so angry if there was any kind of transparency, I'm down about 50 dollars because of this program and it may end up being even worse when I check how close I am to my upload limit.

Does Panda work to speed up gameplay?

I read through this post, and it seems that some people say that Panda slows down their whole computer, while others say that without Panda, the game takes longer to load changes like shifting items in inventory.

I removed Panda, and it seems my game got slower, but I am not sure if that was just because I was looking harder than usual.

Does anyone know if Panda is actually trying to help the game go faster during play, and not just when downloading the game file?

Panda is ONLY for downloading the game initially. It is not used for patching. Leaving it running will at best do nothing and at worst make the game slower by using your Internet bandwidth. You can safely uninstall it after installation.

A spaceship from another star / They ask me where all the people are
I tell them I'm the only one / There was a war, but I must have won